SYRIA - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appears to have disappeared from Damascus after his top security staff was killed in a suicide bombing.

UK - Central bankers and regulators will hold talks in September on whether the troubled global Libor interest rate can be reformed or whether it is so damaged that the benchmark of borrowing costs should be scrapped.

UK - One in seven MPs have never had a proper job, according to research. Many more have served only brief stints as lobbyists or public relations advisers before entering politics full-time. Ninety MPs have never held a job outside politics, against 20 in 1982. Labour leader Ed Miliband is among those who have never had a significant job outside politics. Another is Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who worked for a year as a Brussels lobbyist and dabbled for a few months in journalism before taking a job with the European Commission. Former independent MP Martin Bell said the figures highlighted a dangerous trend, which had left modern politicians increasingly disconnected from real life.

UK - Britain is exporting more goods to countries outside the European Union than those inside it for the first time since we joined the Common Market in the 1970s. Firms are entering growing markets in Asia and Latin America in what economists are hailing as a ‘revolution in the orientation of British trade’. The figures will also be welcomed by Tory Eurosceptics as a sign that a looser relationship with the EU would not disadvantage the UK.

JAPAN - Nearly 36 per cent of children in Fukushima Prefecture have been disgnosed with abnormal growths on their thyroids, although doctors insist there is no link between the "cluster" of incidents and the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in March of last year. A study by the Japan Thyroid Association in 2001 found that zero percent of children in the city of Nagasaki had nodules and only 0.8 percent had cysts on their thyroids. A second report has been issued by Japan's Institute of Radiological Sciences in which it found that some children living close to the plant were exposed to "lifetime" doses of radiation to their thyroid glands.

USA - Capital One Financial agreed to pay $210 million to resolve charges by banking regulators that its call-center representatives misled consumers into paying for extra credit card products. The enforcement action, announced on Wednesday, is the first by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which said it unearthed the activities through an examination of the bank. "We are putting companies on notice that these deceptive practices are against the law and will not be tolerated," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

USA - The end of the world is nigh. Or so you might think if you immersed yourself in American popular culture. From TV adverts to Hollywood movies, depictions of post-apocalyptic worlds are everywhere. There is a long tradition of such apocalyptic thinking in the US. But as Matthew Barrett Gross and Mel Giles argue in their book 'The Last Myth', it has now moved beyond religious prophecies into the secular world. The authors also claim that activists from both the political left and right have embraced apocalypse thinking, issuing dramatic warnings that everything from the traditional American way of life to the very existence of the planet is under threat.

EUROPE - Since the spring, conditions have clearly soured. Chinese GDP has weakened, US leading indicators have dipped and Europe remains deeply recessionary and embroiled in yet another round of crisis. The true flaw at the heart of the euro zone: A MONETARY UNION WITHOUT A FISCAL UNION. Germany actually stands ready to embrace the “United States of Europe,” if done right. It is just that a deposit-insurance program makes no sense until banks are first centrally regulated. And euro bonds are foolish until governments are bound to fiscal prudence.

USA - Between April-June 2012, an estimated 246,000 Americans were added to Social Security's disability insurance program. In that same time period, only 225,000 American jobs were created.

USA - Ben Bernanke offered a gloomy outlook for the US economy but the Federal Reserve chairman offered no hint of further monetary easing in testimony to Congress.

BERLIN, GERMANY - According to media reports, the German Ministry of Economics seeks to facilitate exports of the German arms industry. It was reported that two ministerial draft bills are pleading to "purge" foreign trade legislation to increase exports of German military material.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was forced to consider calling an early general election on Tuesday night after the largest party in the country's parliament walked out of his ruling coalition. Just two months after joining a unity government, Shaul Mofaz led his Kadima party into opposition after failing to secure legislation extending conscription to Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jews. Until now, most ultra-Orthodox Jews have been exempt from army service on the grounds that many do not complete their religious education until they are in their forties.

USA - Corn futures are heading to record highs on reports of wider crop devastation, and as forecasts show continued hot, dry weather threatening even more of this year’s crop. The latest US Department of Agriculture data shows that just 31 percent of the corn crop is in good to excellent shape, a sharp drop from the 40 percent level last week. Soybean conditions also declined to 34 percent from 40 percent last week.

VATICAN - A European report on the Vatican's attempts to embrace financial transparency on Wednesday said the Holy See still had to make important reforms before it could reach international standards on combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism. As expected, the report by Moneyval, a department of the Council of Europe, said the Vatican had received negative grades on seven of the 16 so-called key and core recommendations and passing grades on the other nine. The report says the Vatican "has come a long way in a short period of time" and many of the "building blocks" to combat money laundering were in place but more had to be done.

USA - A US Senate subcommittee has discovered that British banking giant HSBC gave money to a Saudi bank with suspected links to terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda. Saudi Arabia has not responded to the findings. Middle East expert Ali Rizk told RT that the findings put pressure on the West to reconsider its friendly relations with Saudi Arabia. A report published by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations states that HSBC provided funds to the Saudi Al-Rajhi Bank, which a number of media and government reports have tied to terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.